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Slideshow: Building a Better Future One Robot at a Time

April 3, 2014 - 2:30pm

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Students from Hardin Valley Academy in Tennessee prepare their robot for the FIRST Robotics Smoky Mountain regionals. The FIRST robotics competition challenges high school students to design, build and program a complex robot that can compete in that year’s game. The team, called the RoHAWKtics, used 3D printing and carbon fiber reinforced plastic to build their robot this year.

Image: Michael Messing

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This year's game is called Aerial Assist. Three teams must work together in an alliance to score as many points in a 2-minute and 30-second match. To score points, the teams must move the ball down the playing field and get the ball in one of eight goal openings or pass it over the truss. The RoHAWKtics team built their robot, number 3824, using 3D printing and a shop vacuum fitted with an electric motor. To shoot the game ball, the robot uses a 3D-printed nozzle and pneumatic pistons.

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In the first round of play, robots operate independently for 10 seconds, trying to score goals. For the rest of the match, drivers remotely control robots from behind a protective wall as they try to protect their goals from the other teams and score as many points as possible.

Image: Michael Messing

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Pictured here is Joseph Nuttall, the RoHAWKtics' human player. When the ball goes out of play or leaves the playing field, Joseph is one of the students who can throw it back to the robots.

Image: Hardin Valley Academy RoHAWKtics

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Dr. Woodie Flowers, one of the founders of FIRST Robotics, visits the RoHAWKtics pit.

Image: Hardin Valley Academy RoHAWKtics

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RoHAWKtics team members cheer on players at the Smoky Mountain Regionals in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Image: Michael Messing

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The RoHAWKtics team celebrates as Dr. Lonnie Love (center) wins the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award. Presented to one mentor at every regional competition, the award recognizes effective communication in the art and science of engineering and design. Dr. Love is an engineer at Oak Ridge's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility and is one of RoHAWKtics' mentors. Dr. Love was integral to opening the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility to FIRST robotics teams in Eastern Tennessee.

Image: Michael Messing

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The FIRST Robotics competition is about more than just building a robot -- it helps students learn public speaking, problem solving, team work, fundraising and how to run a business. To help raise money for the team, students use 3D printers to create trophies and thank you gifts for sponsors. Pictured here RoHAWKtics team members present a 3D-printed robot bobble head to the L&M STEM Academy STEMpunks.

For the past six weeks, students in Tennessee have been in front of computers modeling 3D designs and in workshops building robots. Their goal? To win the FIRST Robotics competition and along the way, show the world what’s possible with the next generation of manufacturing.

The FIRST robotics competition challenges high school students to design, build and program a complex robot that can compete in a game that changes every year. With help from the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Lab, students are incorporating cutting-edge manufacturing techniques, like 3D printing, into their robots, while pushing the boundaries of research forward.

“It’s been a real eye opener for us,” says Dr. Lonnie Love, an Oak Ridge engineer and one of nearly 40 FIRST robotics mentors from the Lab. “Interacting with these kids helps us drive our research in new directions.”

Additive manufacturing -- also called 3D printing -- is a new way of making products from a digital model to reduce manufacturing waste, save energy and shorten the time needed to bring a product to market. Unencumbered by traditional ways of thinking, students try things with 3D printing that most engineers wouldn’t think of. And their creativity is paying off.

Four years ago when Hardin Valley Academy first entered the FIRST competition, the school didn’t have a machine shop, but students had access to a 3D printer. Dr. Love, one of the team’s many mentors, taught three students computer-aided design, and they built about 25 percent of their robot using additive manufacturing. The following year when Oak Ridge opened its state-of-the-art Manufacturing Demonstration Facility to all local teams, Hardin Valley’s team made the first and only all-additive robot in the competition -- a record that they still hold today.

The mentoring relationship between Oak Ridge and FIRST robotics teams doesn’t just benefit the Lab. It’s helping teachers introduce advanced technologies in the classroom and inspiring students to go into STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers. Through a partnership with the Lab, seniors from area high schools have the opportunity to intern at the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility and work on 3D printing projects.

This year to ensure that more students had access to advanced manufacturing technologies, the Energy Department and Oak Ridge donated almost 400 3D printers to teams competing in the FIRST competition and worked with industry and America Makes to provide an additional 50 printers to teams. Next year, the Lab hopes that all teams will have access to 3D printers through donations like these.